Saturday, February 25, 2006

Ending the Suppression of Free Speech in Indiana

For many decades, the Indiana State Legislature has invited ministers to open legislative sessions with prayer.

And, while ministers of virtually every faith have been invited from time to time, Indiana being Indiana, most of the ministers have been Christian (and, likely, mostly Protestant, at that).

This, of course means, that for decades and decades, many a minister has seen fit to end his prayer at the opening of the legislative session in some variety of the commonly used Protestant Christian formula, “in Jesus’ Name. Amen.”

This explicitly Christian formulation (or, in fact, any reference to Christ) uttered in prayers said in the Indiana Capitol were found by some to be offensive (never mind that Catholic priests, Jewish rabbis, etc, were also invited from time to open sessions with prayer according to their own preferred style of prayer).

Somehow the whole thing made it to the courts. Somehow (surprise, surprise!) the case landed on the desk of bigoted, anti-Christian judge. Somehow the judge saw fit to issue an egregiously unconstitutional ruling forbidding any future references to Jesus Christ in these legislative session-opening prayers in the Indiana State legislature.

Specifically, the legislation would not only neutralize one bad court decision, but would immunize all state legislators from any future such judicial meddling with their religious free speech in the course of their legislative duties.

With a few more legislators like Mike Sodrel, we would likely have a good deal less corruption in Washington, DC.